Decarbonising the steel and electricity industry in pursuit of Net Zero represents a real and present danger to national security and must be abandoned, a former Security Minister has warned.
Writing in a foreword to a new paper from campaign group Net Zero Watch, Sir Gerald Howarth, Minister for International Security Strategy under David Cameron, said:
Our adversaries are watching us like hawks, so let us leave them in no doubt: we are rearming and rebuilding, and Net Zero is firmly on hold.
Professor Gwythian Prins, a defence expert and one of the paper’s authors, agrees that with the recent deterioration of the world’s security situation, “luxury beliefs” such as Net Zero must be jettisoned as a matter of urgency:
This is the moment when the music stops. The Port Talbot closure harshly exposes the costs of luxury ‘green’ beliefs. We cannot be dependent on imports for the full range of necessary steels to rebuild our arsenals – the Navy first and foremost – and, most ridiculously, we cannot depend for them on our global antagonists.